In computing, a mouse gesture is a way of combining computer mouse movements and clicks which the software recognizes as a specific command. Mouse gestures can provide quick access to common functions of a program. They can also be useful for people who have difficulties typing on a keyboard. For example, in a web browser, the user could navigate to the previously viewed page by pressing the right mouse button, moving the mouse briefly to the left, then releasing the button.
A major drawback of current gesture interaction solutions is the lack of support for two necessary user interface design principles, feedback and visibility. Feedback notification is required to indicate whether the gesture has been entered correctly by indicating the gesture recognized and the corresponding command activated, although Sensiva does approach this to some extent in providing voice notification. Mojo Sidekick provides an alternative solution with a pop-up click-through notification. The other principal is visibility of gestures, providing the user some means of learning the necessary gestures and the contexts they can be used in. Mojo gesture does this to some extent by providing pop-up cheat-sheets, that show a list of gestures, when the mouse pointer is held down. Both Mouse Gestures for Internet Explorer and ALToolbar Mouse Gestures display colored tracers that indicate the current motion that the user is taking to facilitate visual clues for the user.
Moousture is a mouse gesture library with power and flexiblity to mould itself for you. Implemented on Mootools following the Object Oriented standards. Library is aimed to set out a future framework for mouse guesters for any browser including modern mobile devices.
Its based on three major concepts. A probe, which probes the pointing device. A monitor, which tests the stability of probed device on given intervals and accordingly notifies Moousture events (onStable, onUnstable, onMove). And a Moousture recorder class that records the mouse movements and invoke the guesture object passed to it. Each class allows you to tune the way gestures for yourself.